God is Judging His Own Children

In these days Israel had no king. The Israelites inquired of God for His leadership through God’s priests and prophets. They followed God’s laws. They were not perfect men with their obedience, like we are not perfect in obeying God’s Word, but God was faithful to bring them into Canaan as promised, and to give their enemies into their hands – as long as they continued to inquire of Him and do what He said. Why did God call the people living in Canaan “enemies?”

James 4:4 “Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.”

With God there is no gray area; you are either with Him or against Him. If you are against His laws then you are against Him. If you are against Him then you’ll also be against those who are with Him. You are either in His family or you are not. Even if you have told yourself that there is no God – this makes you His enemy. You have come to believe what the devil has told you instead of what God’s Spirit has told you. The devil is a clever liar and he has been lying to mankind since the beginning in the Garden of Eden. We can see the result of this all throughout our sick and hostile world.

Here we see an account of what God requires of His people when any part of them become “friends with the world.” (The world is under the power of Satan; for he is called “the god of this world who deceives the world.)

The Benjamites of Gibeah were not guarding themselves from the false-gods of the land that God told them to overtake as their inheritance. An old man (Israelite from Ephraim) living in Gibeah came in from the field and saw the traveler (a Levite with his concubine) in the town square. He warned him not to stay overnight there, and invited them to come home with him. The leading men of the city surrounded the old man’s house demanding:

“Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him!” (Judges 19:22)

Imagine that; imagine that happening in our nation where we now have laws protecting the spread of homosexuality.

The Bible refers to “Satan’s secret” behind all his lies. What is Satan’s secret with persuading men (and women) to go against God’s laws; that evil is good and good is evil? We can listen to all the world news reports and get a pretty good idea.

In Leviticus 18 God gives a list of sexually immoral acts. One in particular is what this article is about:

“Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable….This is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled.” Leviticus 18:22, 24)

You’d think God had changed His mind about sexual immorality, namely homosexuality, by the way God is being explained today by those who do not have God’s Spirit in them. There is a wrong thinking/belief in the churches that we can “tolerate” evil without evil overtaking us personally. We are told in the Bible to “endure till the Lord comes,” but “enduring” the evil day is not the same of “tolerating” evil. There is a big difference. “Tolerance” is the liar’s way of “progressively” getting what he wants done.

If you think that homosexuality is simply about letting gays live ‘peacefully’ the way they want, you are wrong. Behind this lifestyle is God’s ancient enemy who plans to use these poor souls in the worst way, as we see in both historical accounts with Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah still hanging to his faith in God, and with this old man in Gibeah holding to the truth of God. In both accounts, homosexuals wanted to force their wickedness on all the people till they either ‘liked it’ personally or they were ‘too afraid’ to say a thing against it and having to protect themselves.

God says about a society like this, “Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land VOMITED OUT ITS INHABITANTS.” (Leviticus 18:25)

How does the land vomit out the inhabitants who oppose His good laws? Diseases in one way. Natural disasters is another. War another. In America we have all of these taking place with a rapid increase.

So then, what does God expect and require of His own people? God’s people, the Benjamites living in Gibeah, had “tolerated” and then “compromised” what God told them to do. So God roused the other Israelites to come against their own brothers. God “roused them” by what the Levite did with his concubine’s dead body after the homosexuals raped her all night long when they couldn’t get to the Levite in the home of the old man. The Levite cut her dead body into twelve parts and sent them into all the tribes of Israel. (Judges 19:29) This infuriated them all to action. They assembled and said:

“We must DO something! So SPEAK UP!”

They assembled before the Lord in Mizpah armed with swords to hear from God as to what He would have them to do. The Lord told them to fight. Just as the homosexuals had demanded that the old man send out the Levite so they could have sex with him, here you see the righteous demanding their brothers to turn the wicked men over. But the Benjamites would not listen to their fellow Israelites! So they went to war. The outcome was death on both sides, but the Lord gave the unfaithful Benjamites into the hands of their faithful brothers (Judges 20:28), and the city of Gibeah was burned to ashes with everyone in it put to the sword. When the surviving Benjamites saw “the smoke” that knew they were beaten. Read Judges 21 to see what God told the Israelites to do for their humbled brothers after this. God did not give up on the tribe of Benjamin.

The Church can learn from this, as to how we need to see what is happening in our nation and what the Lord would have us do. The Church is divided (similarly like Benjamin was from the other tribes) about sexual immorality and how to treat it.

We endure – not tolerate. We endure by keeping our own heart ‘guarded’ for the Lord, living the way God says to live, holding our children accountable, no matter what society does or what our country’s government threatens us with, by their own laws. We endure the ‘outcome’ of having remained faithful to the Lord: persecution. We endure the ‘inner grief’ of what we see happening to people giving into the lies and deception of Satan – as we pray for God to work in the hearts the truth and the salvation of Jesus Christ who loves them. We make ourselves available to the Lord to speak the truth in love to those He is drawing to Himself.

We do nottolerate (accept/allow) evil. We go to battle against it, and as we are told in God’s Word, we do not fight against flesh and blood as the Lord had His people do before, but now “in Christ” we can and better fight against the true enemy with our spiritual armor on for warfare prayer: the Sword of the Spirit of God’s own Words; staying in our battle positions each day for those being rescued by the Savior from the hands of “the god of this world.” God will give them into our hands!

Are we are so ignorant to believe that this is NOT God judging His own people with all these fires and hurricanes and other natural disasters, along with the past and ongoing diseases resulting from sexual immorality and mass abortions as well? Is God NOT judging our man-made laws that not only protect but honor what God hates and shames? The Bible teaches us that God’s judgment FIRST begins in His own House with His own children so that we are NOT judged along with the wicked on that Day.

So as the Lord’s people we need to first REPENT of whatever sinful lifestyle or wrong thinking we have that opposes the truth of His Word, and then filled with His Spirit we pray continually with our spiritual armor on (Ephesians 6:10-20), making ourselves READY for how the Lord wants to use us right in our own nation.

With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people to fearlessly make known the gospel of Jesus Christ.